White House is right to push back

Republicans suggest that the aggressive move by the Obama White House to take on people and organizations that disagree with it and oppose its policies is an unprecedented abuse of government resources.

This is, of course, nonsense.

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The Obama team is engaged in a series of tough legislative and press battles and is stepping up its game, not stepping over the line. And the actions taken by the White House are mild and pale compared with those of the Gingrich and Bush years.

Let’s look at the Republican record on this.

This White House may be trying to sideline all lobbyists from K Street, but it was the Republicans who invented the K Street Project — steering contracts and business to the lobbyists from their own party while seeking to cut out the Democrats. This White House has a principle it is applying across the board, agree with it or not. The Republicans were enforcing the principle or rewarding their own.

President George W. Bush had plenty of groups he did not meet with or spurned, often changing his mind only after negative public reaction built up. Remember him declining year after year the chance to speak to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People — an organization that hosted every president since Herbert Hoover? Only in 2006 did he reverse course.

Activist Cindy Sheehan became famous for following Bush to his ranch, asking for a meeting and a hearing. Bush also declined to meet with a bipartisan committee working to rewrite the education bill and, despite repeated requests, refused all but once to meet with the Congressional Black Caucus. Bush even declined to meet with Nelson Mandela in 2003 because the former South African political prisoner opposed the Iraq war.

As House speaker, Newt Gingrich would not meet with the National Endowment for the Arts, calling it a group based on patronage and elitism.

So when it comes to declining meetings with groups you disagree with, Bush and Gingrich set the standard — not this White House.

Second, the administration’s back and forth about Fox News is nothing new. Now I don’t think that getting into the tussle with Fox News makes great strategic sense, but it certainly isn’t original — the Republicans have been blasting the “liberal” media for decades.